Mitt Romney brought their “war on women” into the general population’s consciousness earlier this week after his comments during the presidential debate at Hofstra University this Tuesday.

Romney’s comments on choosing females employees from “binders full of women” has cause an onslaught of online jokes and criticism from his opponents. By Wednesday morning hundreds of thousands had logged on to the “Binder full of women” Tumblr account.

Since 2011 Democrats have been using the phrase “war on women” when describing what they believe to be an unprecedented legislative focus on women’s access to abortion and contraception.

Paul Ryan has cast 60 votes on abortion and reproductive rights during his time in the House of Representatives. All of them were deemed “anti-choice” by women’s health groups.

On Thursday this week Rich Beeson, Mitt Romney’s campaign political director, reaffirmed that apparent Republican views on women. He said reproductive rights and equal pay were “small things” that are not important to voters.

Beeson said “Barack Obama four years ago said, 'If you don't have something to talk about on the issues you talk about the small things.

“And that's what we're seeing from the Obama campaign ... They don't have an issue to run on, they don’t have an agenda for the next term, so they want to talk about the small things and distract America from the important things of restoring and strengthening the middle class and putting America back to work."